What are possibilities to capture 3D information in our environment?

The basis of all 3D-related things in OSM is the mapping of the 3D information itself.
Nowadays, there are numerous possibilities for interested 3D mappers to capture the data, without the necessity of having expensive surveying equipment, e.g. by the use of Smartphones or just your eyes!

This page is a result of the 2nd 3D Workshop Garching and shall provide a collection of possible approaches/sensors/tools for low-cost 3D mapping and what to take care of while doing so. Also, discussions about what has to be done in order to use this for 3D OSM may take place here.

Feel free to expand the page. For personal comments let's use the talk page, please!

Smartphones/Tablets

Todays smartphones provide various sensors which can be used for 3D mapping.

Camera: taking images, see below

3D Camera: some of the latest smartphones are equipped with two cameras with which stereoscopic measurements are possible. How to use this for 3D mapping?

GPS: mainly useful for 2D information like exact building outlines at ground floor level, position of the entrance etc. may also be used for height measurement if roof level is accessible

Images

Facade Images

Current building block models could be enhanced significantly by attaching textures from the real building to it. Tagging could also be done remotely if it is possible to call up a street-level picture of the building.

The university of Granada demonstrated an UAV 3D imaging system with 3D modeling with open source VisualSFM[1][2] for buildings.[3]

This technique could potentially be used for future 3D model repositories like OpenBuildingModels or Open3DMap. However, it needs to be evaluated thoroughly how suitable this is compared to manual 3D modelling.

Laser meters

Allow for direct, non-contact measurement of arbitrary distances with high accuracy.
Low-cost laser meters are already available for "only" less than 100 EUR...

Point cloud data

Devices like the Microsoft Kinect or Asus Xtion are able to capture 3D information as point cloud data. While aquiring the data is as simple as walking around the building while recording, point cloud data sets tend to be large, are noisy, require the registration of multiple views into one model and require triangulation of the resulting data set to receive a mesh. So, while the sensors themselves are relatively cheap, the additional steps required might not be worth it. Libraries usefull for dealing with point cloud data are e.g. the PCL (http://pointclouds.org/).

Use your eyes!

You can already map many 3D-related information just with your eyes, e.g.

Number of levels of a building

Basic roof type, orientation

Facade/Roof colours and materials

...

Kites, Quadrocopters etc.

Acquiring up-to-date aerial imagery by using Kites or the like equipped with cameras.